


your life was my life's best part

by purplefennels7



Category: Captain Marvel (2019), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Declarations Of Love, F/F, Temporary Character Death, carol's jacket, lowercase as aesthetic, maria thinks carol is dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 12:39:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18282545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplefennels7/pseuds/purplefennels7
Summary: maria rambeau is in love with carol danvers. carol's gone before she ever gets to tell her.and then six years later, carol comes back with a cat and a renegade shield agent and no memories of anything. it changes far fewer things than it should.





	your life was my life's best part

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in an hour after i saw captain marvel. i thought it looked better if i left it in lowercase so i did. maria and carol are very gay.

“do you love her?” monica asks one night after carol’s left and it’s just her and maria on the couch watching tv. maria stiffens.

“love who?” she asks, proud of herself for how steady her voice comes out. monica turns and fixes her with a look so reminiscent of carol’s appraising squint that maria doesn’t know if she wants to laugh or cry. she shouldn’t have expected to be able to play dumb to her own daughter. 

“auntie carol, duh,” monica says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “you always hug her extra-long when she leaves and you look at her funny sometimes.” maria feels like she’s falling out of the sky.

“of course i love her, sweetie. she’s like my sister. now hush and watch the show, okay?” monica looks unconvinced, but obediently turns back to the tv, leaving maria to watch her world spin out of control.  _ of course i love her. _ she turns her own words over in her mouth and winces at how cheap they feel, a facsimile of what she really wants to say, and all at once she realizes that she does love her. she’s in love with carol danvers, and it doesn’t feel like a revelation, like some big rom-com reveal - it just feels right.

it feels like coming home.

because carol is home. carol is safety, even though she might be the least safe person maria knows. carol is her rock. carol is her heart and soul, and maria’s been stupid enough for long enough that she hasn’t even noticed. 

she feels like shit for the rest of the night. she’s lied, however inadvertently, to her daughter, she’s lied to carol, she’s lied to herself.

she wants to tell her, the next morning, when she gets to the airfield and finds her already there, perched on the wing of her plane laughing with dr. lawson, glowing in the early-morning light. wants to pick her up and spin her around and kiss her as the sun rises and tell her she loves her as they leave the ground.

but the colonel is there and so is the doctor and she can’t. she just can’t risk it, risk this thing that both of them have spent a lifetime working towards.

so she puts on a smile and walks over and hugs carol tight before she climbs into her cockpit and wishes that could be enough.

she can only watch as carol falls. as the man stalks across the clearing her crash has ripped into the woods and plants a bullet in dr. lawson’s chest. as carol, the bravest woman she’s ever known, stands with a gun pointed at her head and pulls her trigger. as the explosion swallows her whole. 

maria remembers every moment after that in crystal clarity. flying back to the base, alone, wings singed by the blast. being met by the colonel and the fire trucks on the runway. the interrogation. being told the ambulances found one body, not two. and through it all the refrain:  _ i loved her, i loved her, i lost her. i failed her. _

she goes home and holds monica tight and tells her the news. monica cries for hours, hugging the jacket carol had left on the back of one of the kitchen table chairs. maria holds her and stares at carol’s name embroidered on the leather and looks at the pictures of her and monica and carol on the walls and doesn’t shed a single tear, not until monica’s gone quiet and limp in her embrace and she’s carried her to bed and tucked her in under the covers.

and then maria breaks down, pressing the jacket against her nose and breathing in carol’s perfume and the barest hint of her hair spray. 

“carol is dead,” she whispers to the empty room. “carol is dead, and i never told her i loved her.”

she doesn’t sleep a single wink that night. around three in the morning she goes outside and sits in the grass and stares up at the stars, and when a shooting star goes by she puts her fingers against her lips and raises them to the sky.

“if you can hear me, carol,” she says, “wherever you are. i hope you are happy. i hope you get to fly.” and out there with carol’s beloved stars her only witnesses she says the words she’s always been too afraid to say.

“i love you, carol. more than anything.”

monica finds her curled around carol’s jacket in the morning, eyes red-rimmed and tears dried on her cheeks. she runs back inside and a moment later returns with maria’s favourite picture of them, on the day carol got her wings. looking at it, maria wonders how she ever thought she  _ wasn’t _ in love with carol. it’s written all over her face, in the way she looks at her. 

“thanks, sweetie,” she says, puts the jacket down to hug monica tight.

“did you love her?” monica asks eventually. maria nods.

“yeah, i did.”

and then, just when maria is getting used to living without carol, just when she’s started to not expect her to be there with a smirk and a one-liner every time she turns her head, just when looking at the pictures on the walls has begun to hurt less - six years, damn it - carol comes back, with a cat and a renegade shield agent and no memories of anything. and maria, who’s spent six years wishing she could go back, thinks,  _ damn it, carol, why couldn’t you have stayed dead? _ because this isn’t the carol she knows. this isn’t her carol. she’s veers, or whatever she says her name is, and she shoots fire from her hands and she wears an alien space suit and she speaks of things that maria can’t begin to comprehend. 

but, no. this is carol danvers. this is maria’s best friend. the woman maria loved - still loves, really, and maria would go to the ends of the earth for her, memories or no. she clings to that thought even after the pictures, the black box, the skrull. after she and agent nick fury steal a space cube and smuggle a bunch of skrulls out of the core and find out that carol’s cat is not actually a cat. after she watches carol fall again - but this time, she gets up. 

and when they’re all sitting in maria’s dining room, maria and monica and fury and carol and the skrulls whose names she can’t remember, she catches carol up in a rib-crushing hug and lets one or two tears fall into her messy blonde hair and whispers, “you scared me today, carol, you really did. i thought i’d lost you again.”

carol smiles.

“i’d come back. for you, i’d come back.”

and then she laughs and pulls maria by the hand out under the same stars she’d looked up at six years ago, and maria can only stare at her, golden and glowing and so very alive. 

“i love you.” she doesn’t mean to say it, but she can’t go back now. just when she’s starting to worry, carol grins, bright and joyful.

“i love you too, maria.” and then she kisses her, and smiles some more, and maria smiles back and wonders how she’d ever gotten so lucky.

“i still need to go,” she says, later.

“i know.” maria kisses her again, just because she can.

when they get back inside the skrulls are already gone, and monica is giggling at some undoubtedly atrocious joke fury’s making, and suddenly maria wants them to stay. she thinks that her and monica and carol and fury and carol’s weird alien cat could be a family. and maybe someday, in the distant future, when everything is crumbling down around her and the only thing she can be certain of is carol, maria will ask carol to stay, and carol will smile and kiss her and say yes. 

but right now maria just smiles and accepts the communicator fury hands her, ‘if you ever need me,’ and watches as he and carol share some kind of complicated handshake. and then he’s gone, and it’s just maria and monica and carol left. carol picks monica up and hugs her and when she runs inside to get carol’s jacket carol leans over and kisses maria, long and soft. 

“i love you. i’ll come visit.” monica comes back with the jacket in her hands, and carol pulls it on over her suit, kisses monica on the forehead, levels maria with a sharp smirk. 

and then she’s gone in a trail of sparkles.

“is she gonna come back, mom?” monica asks.

“yeah, she is, hon. she is.”

**Author's Note:**

> hope y'all liked it! i treasure comments and kudos <3  
> hmu on [tumblr](https://natrcmanov.tumblr.com)


End file.
